


but you're the piece that holds us together

by teesandjays



Category: Gallagher Girls Series - Ally Carter
Genre: F/M, UWS Spoilers, also matt/joe rules my life i didnt write it okay it wrote itself, ew don't even look at me this is so horrible
Language: English
Status: Completed
Published: 2013-09-18
Updated: 2013-09-18
Packaged: 2017-12-26 22:37:23
Rating: Teen And Up Audiences
Warnings: Creator Chose Not To Use Archive Warnings
Chapters: 1
Words: 1,626
Publisher: archiveofourown.org
Story URL: https://archiveofourown.org/works/971108
Author URL: https://archiveofourown.org/users/teesandjays/pseuds/teesandjays
Summary: <blockquote class="userstuff">
              <p>See the thing is, Joe meets her first.</p>
            </blockquote>





	but you're the piece that holds us together

**Author's Note:**

> i literally finished united we spy, cried in christine's inbox and then wrote this so please forgive me for the shit quality okay.

See the thing is, Joe meets her first.

-

He runs into her on his first day at Langley. It’s the cliché of all clichés – he’s turning the corner without looking and smacks right into her. He’s stumbling out a mess of apologizes before he even looks up, ‘ _didn’t see you there’_ , ‘ _wasn’t looking’_ , ‘ _are you okay’_ , the whole works. And when he finally raises his head to meet her eyes, all he ends up seeing is that soft amused little smile flitting around on her lips and it hit’s him like a sledgehammer to the head the way his entire body freezes and his heart plummets into his stomach.

“It’s okay, I’m fine,” she replies easily and he can hear the amusement wrapped up in every word. Her eyes are laughing at him and that smile’s still on her face and all he can think to himself is _fuck_. 

-

Her name is Rachel, she’s twenty-three, she lives alone but her sister visits on weekends and she possesses the unbelievable ability to burn Ramen noodles. She laughs at his corny jokes and he makes fun of her cooking skills to which she'll give him a dead arm in response all while smiling at him angelically. 

Joe is so in love with her it hurts just to think about it.

-

But then there’s Matt.

And the thing is, Joe loves Matt more than anyone else in this world – loves him more than a best friend, than a brother, than his own flesh and blood. But more than that, he trusts Matt, because Matt’s the type of person who makes you see the good in the world, who smiles and it’s like the whole fucking room lights up with him because it’s impossible to think negative when every single aspect of his being makes you think of sunshine and warmth and home.

Or maybe that’s Joe, but that’s neither here nor there.

But he trusts Matt, trusts him with his life and his secrets and fears, with every demon that haunts him from his past and wreaks havoc upon his mind in the middle of the night – and he wakes up and Matt will be there with a calming hand on his shoulder, a steady presence in his life that he holds onto with a death grip.

And then Matt meets Rachel and all he can feel is himself slipping.

-

It’s like love at first sight – a scene stolen straight out of a romance novel the way the two of them can’t keep their eyes off each other without blushing and giggling like two teenagers with massive crushes on each other. But Joe gets it, no he really does, because two people with that much good in their hearts and life in their eyes – they deserve each other and he means that without a hint to bitterness or sarcasm.

He watches as Matt tucks a stray piece of hair behind Rachel’s ear, takes in the way their cheeks are both flushed, the brightness in their eyes and the matching grins that have been plastered to their faces for the last hour. He watches it all and something constricts inside of him, squeezes all the air out his lungs until it feels like he’s just flesh and bone. The knots in his stomach curl tighter when Matt laughs at something Rachel says, open and easy as always, and something akin to envy wraps itself around his ribs.

He rubs absentmindedly at his chest and wonders which one of them he’s really jealous of.

-

Time goes on though, they all grow up, Matt and Rachel get married and Joe learns to bury his feelings behind layers and layers of stoicism, crafts masks and facades to hide behind when he feels his emotions leaking too close to the surface.

It makes it all a lot easier when Matt asks him to be the best man at his wedding and Joe smiles and says ‘of course I will you idiot’ and pulls him into a hug. There’s a dull twinge in his chest and he has to swallow past the lump in his throat when he thinks of her walking down the aisle in her white dress while he stands on the side watching.

When he pulls back Matt’s looking at him a little weirdly, his smile still on his face but it looks like he’s fighting down an incoming frown by the way his eyebrows have drawn together, little wrinkle lines framing his forehead. It looks wrong on him – worry never did suit him well, so when he opens his mouth like he’s going to say something, Joe just ruffles his hair and smiles.

“I’m really happy for you,” he tells him and Matt watches him wearily for another second before he seems to find some conclusion to whatever’s going on in his mind and then he’s sending Joe one of those blindingly white grins that he can't help but smile back at. 

 _That’s better_ he thinks and stamps down on the guilt rising up in him with a ferocity he didn’t even know he possessed because he’s not going to be the one to get in the way of their happiness.  

-

Then Cammie happens, and the Circle happens, and Catherine happens, and Matt goes missing.

Joe stays away from those memories like a plague.

-

He stills remembers the look on Rachel’s face, the way her cheeks had hollowed out and her eyes had looked sunken in, ringed red with tears and bruised around the edges, the evidence of sleepless nights. Joe knows he never fared any better.

“I sent her to stay with his parents,” she says when Joe looks around the empty apartment for Cammie.

“I just needed – I couldn’t,” she takes a deep breath and he swears he can hear it rattle in her chest. “She looks too much like him Joe,” she whispers finally, her voice hoarse and cracking at the end and it hits him there, literally slams into his face at that exact moment that Matt’s really gone.

He pulls her into his arms, kisses the top of her head and tries to breathe through the feeling of his entire world crumbling around him.

-

The years pass and he doesn’t see her. There are some memories that just cut too deep, like pressing a rusty knife into an open wound and she’s one of them, god she’s always one of them. But then she calls him one day with a favour and he tries to push it off, tries to come up with excuse after excuse (he really should know better, she’s always seen through his bullshit) but he eventually agrees in the end. He never could say no to her.

So he packs his bags and takes the first flight out to Virginia and hopes to god that whatever mess of his heart is left doesn’t end up broken again.

-

So of course it gets broken again, it gets broken and re-broken more times than he thought he could ever survive but somehow he comes out of it alive – they all come out of it alive.

That night he finally stops thinking, literally just lets his body go on autopilot and pulls her into his arms. Before he can make any move though, she's already kissing him, soft but demanding against his lips and it tastes like _finally_. 

-

He asks her to marry him while gun shots are raining over their heads in the middle of a forest.

Joe’s never really been the romantic type but she says yes so that counts for something in the end.

-

He’s ends up at the graveyard anyway; it was only a matter of time. He sits down in front of the gravestone, crosses his legs over each other like a little child and stares at the name etched into stone in front of him. He thinks of what he should say but the only thing that comes to mind is ‘ _I’m sorry I fell in love with your wife, except I’m really not and that makes me feel like a shit person’_ and well – yeah. But then he thinks back on that day Matt told him he and Rachel were going to get married, remembers the strange look that had passed over his face and thinks that Matt always knew – the perceptive little bastard.

Except that doesn’t make it any easier, doesn’t bring the words he feels he needs to say to his mind and for almost an hour Joe just sits there staring at the headstone.

And after what feels like a million years, the words just fall out in a whisper, don’t even register until he’s already said them out loud and is left staring down at his hands, at the empty finger that’ll have a ring on it by the end of the month.

_‘I just want to know if it’s alright.’_

It’s in that exact moment though that a bird decides he’ll be perfect target practice and shits on his shoulder. He stares at with something like shock and looks up at the sky but there are no birds anywhere in sight. And just like that, an image comes to his mind bright as day, Matt laughing his ass off at him because he’s the kind of sick asshole who always used to take joy in Joe’s misfortunes, and Joe looks up and thinks ‘ _If this_ _is your idea of a blessing you’re seriously disturbed’_ but it feels like something’s finally been set loose in his chest, like he can wake up tomorrow morning without a constant weight pressing down on him from all sides and he can just breathe.

He leaves his head tipped back up, lets his eyes fall closed and smiles.


End file.
